The Polygonal Path Image

Principle

Curvilinear structures are common in medical imaging, which typically require dedicated processing techniques. We present a new structure to process these, that we call the polygonal path image, denoted PPI. We derive from PPI some curvilinear structure enhancement and analysis algorithms. We show that PPI has some interesting properties: it generalizes several concepts found in other methods; it makes it possible to control the smoothness and length of the structures under study; and it can be computed efficiently. We estimate quantitatively its performance in the context of interventional cardiology for the detection of guide-wires in X-ray images. We show that PPI is particularly well suited for this task where it appears to outperform previous state of the art techniques.